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Cell biologist, Kenneth Miller Ph. D. of Brown University gives a talk on The Collapse of Intelligent Design, at Case Western University:

These comments include my explanation interspersed with descriptions of Miller's talk:

Dr. Kenneth Miller is a Roman Catholic believer, who opens the talk with an explanation of the distinction between evolutionary data and the value of evolutionary theory. He explores the role of methodological naturalism in moving our understanding from data to naturalistic explanation. Absent the scientific method, and our understanding devolves to other pseudosciences such as astrology.

He debunks the intelligent design movement, exposing it, as Judge John Jones ruled, as repackaged creationism that reveals the intellectual dishonesty of any who evangelize ID-creationism.

The issue with IDiocy is not a matter of missing scientific evidence–how else would creationists know what areas to distort into pseudoscience?–the issue is deliberate misinterpretation of available scientific data to IDiotic ends.

(Because intelligent design creation is dishonest, religiously-motivated pseudoscience, I will refer to it as IDiocy and to its proponents as IDiots, though to be fair, YECers are even greater idiots.)

IDiots attempt to support anti-Darwinian arguments in fallacious arguments based on a false dichotomy–that the explanation is either Darwinian natural selection or God-did-it. Yes, the IDiots lied (at the Dover trial) that they 'don't speculate on the identity of the designer', but nobody, including Judge Jones, is fooled. IDiots don't care about some unspecified designer, they care about 'proving' the religionists' God. Early versions of IDiotic books include the term 'creator', whereas editions published after a 1987 court decision exhibit editorial alteration of 'creator' to 'designer' in subsequent printings. Incomplete conversions resulted in the revealingly erroneous 'cdesign proponentsists'. The duplicitous IDiots who conceived of this misleading substitution of terminologies must have assumed that everyone else is as credulous as ID devotees.

Dr. Miller refutes the IDiocy charge that 'we have no intermediate fossils' by describing the inner ear of Ambulocetus natans (the whale that walks).

Kenneth Miller debunks the irreduciblecomplexityargument, explaining why the purported examples of irreducible complexity (eye, blood clotting cascade, bacteria flagellum) are explicable by modern evolutionary theory. (ID proponents don't care about the bacterialflagellum, they care about themselves as examples of Special Creation by SkyDaddy.) Miller describes the 10 proteins of the Type III secretory system, and the fact that all 40 proteins of the bacterial flagellum are homologous with other functional bacterial proteins. Similarly, the blood proteins of the clotting cascade are homologous. The independence of function and separate functions of homologous proteins destroys the basic precept of Behe's claims for irreducible complexity of ID-selected systems.

Of course, irreducible complexity is mere ID prestidigitation that arises not out of any concern for realistic explanation for the bacterial flagellum, but out of mytholiteralism. The ID proponents hoped that these examples would convince the science-ignorant that ID has some validity as criticism of scientific explanation.

Humans and great apes evolved from a common ancestor, as revealed by evidence from endogenous retroviruses and the fused chromosome pair that ensured human-ape speciation (We have 23 pairs and they have 24 pairs of chromosomes, ensuring that our post-fusion ancestors could not have produced viable offspring with their post-fusion ancestors, and this is the definition of speciation according to Ernst Mayr. Our chromosome #2 resulted from fusion of two primate chromosomes.)

The evolution of the eye on David Attenborough's BBC program "Charles Darwin and The Tree of Life"

The entire point of the intelligent [sick] design movement is not to conduct science, not to expand our understanding, not to refine scientific explanations, and certainly not to improve the standards of science education in high schools or universities. Instead, their purpose is to push the ancient non-explanation that reduces to the God-myth. Why? Religionists can only retain the illusion of Special Status by believing in Biblical Inerrancy, Special Creation, and an Eternal Afterlife in the Loving Embrace of SkyDaddy.

Kenneth Miller does predict that following exposure of their pseudoscientific frauds as unconstitutional, IDiots will next attack science by insisting upon teaching of the supposed “controversy.” IDiots are attempting to discredit evolution by holding it to an impossible burden of proof – irreducible complexity is a failed example of this attempt. However, science-ignorant believers are blind to the illogic of these arguments and fooled by the pseudoscience, so those sitting on school boards must be alert to the egregious, theocratic ambitions of IDiots.

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